January 2021 Summaries

DataStax has launched its first learning content in support of a new certificate program: Apache Cassandra Operations in Kubernetes. The course covers topics such as running Cassandra on Kubernetes, the role of DBAs transitioning to Site Reliability Engineers (SREs), and managing the entire application stack. This initiative is based on projects like cass-operator and K8ssandra, which aim to keep operators relevant in today's cloud environment. DataStax is seeking feedback from users as they develop this learning material.

DataStax has launched its first learning content in support of a new certificate program: Apache Cassandra Operations in Kubernetes. The course covers the transition from Database Administrator (DBA) to Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), focusing on managing the entire application stack and maintaining high availability while keeping costs under control. DataStax is seeking feedback from users as they develop this learning material, with a focus on real-time input shaping the knowledge base.

In this episode of The New Stack Makers podcast, Alex Williams is joined by Sam Ramji, CEO at DataStax; Mya Pitzeruse, software engineer at FX; and Tom Offermann, senior software engineer at New Relic. They discuss the role of GRPC in distributed systems, how it can be used to optimize performance, and its potential impact on service meshes. The conversation also touches upon consistency issues in distributed systems, as well as the evolving landscape of machine learning and data management. Additionally, they explore the value of Stargate, an open source API data gateway for modern data applications recently released by DataStax.

In this podcast, Sam Ramji of DataStax discusses how GRPC and Cassandra can optimize performance in distributed systems. He explains that consistency is a major concern when dealing with distributed systems, and the CAP theorem plays an important role in understanding the trade-offs between consistency and availability. The panel also talks about the value of open source projects like Stargate, which aims to provide a data gateway for modern data applications. They emphasize the importance of reducing developer and operator toil by automating certain tasks and letting robots do the work. ```

DataStax is expanding its offerings to include streaming technology alongside its open-source Apache Cassandra database. The company has chosen Apache Pulsar as the right streaming technology for its data stack due to its support for multi-cloud and distributed model similar to Apache Cassandra. DataStax Luna Streaming, a production-ready, open-source distribution and support subscription for Apache Pulsar, is now available, allowing developers to build a unified data platform with seamless access to both data at rest and data in motion.

DataStax has been focusing on messaging solutions due to the growing popularity of microservice-based architectures, which use a message bus for decoupling communication between services and simplifying replay, error handling, and load spikes. The company started by evaluating Apache Kafka but found it lacking in four areas: geo-replication, scaling, multitenancy, and queuing. Apache Pulsar addresses these issues to DataStax's satisfaction. Pulsar offers built-in geo-replication, allowing producers to write and consumers to read topics from anywhere. It also supports both pub/sub and queuing models, enabling it to replace AMQP and JMS use cases as well as Kafka-style pub/sub. Additionally, Pulsar provides multitenancy support, allowing users to manage multiple tenants across multiple regions from a single interface that includes authentication, authorization, isolation policy, and storage quotas. DataStax's new Admin Console for Pulsar makes managing these features even easier. The company has also acquired Kesque's Pulsar-as-a-service offering and open-sourced the management and monitoring tools built by the Kesque team in their new Luna Streaming distribution of Pulsar. DataStax is excited to join the Pulsar community with these developments, which aim to enhance messaging solutions for Cassandra users.

DataStax is expanding its offerings to include streaming capabilities for data at scale. The company has chosen Apache Pulsar as the open-source technology to support multi-cloud and distributed model requirements. DataStax Luna Streaming, a production-ready distribution and support subscription for Apache Pulsar, will enable developers to build a unified data platform with seamless access to both data at rest and data in motion. This expansion aligns with the growing demand for streaming platforms to collect and correlate massively distributed data at high speeds across expanding ecosystems.

In this Q&A series, Dave Mattox, a senior product architect at Deloitte, discusses his work on MissionGraph™, a data integration and exploration platform built on DataStax Enterprise (Cassandra, SOLR, Spark, and Graph) deployed in AWS GovCloud. The platform integrates 12 terabytes of data from 11 different sources to support investigative analytics for law enforcement agencies. Mattox highlights the importance of proper data management and infrastructure to ensure accurate analysis and insights. He also emphasizes the need for training and expertise when working with big data technologies like DataStax, as well as the potential for integrating machine learning and AI models into large-scale environments.

In this Q&A series, Dave Mattox, a senior product architect at Deloitte, discusses his work on MissionGraph™, a data integration and exploration platform built on DataStax Enterprise (Cassandra, SOLR, Spark, and Graph) deployed in AWS GovCloud. The platform integrates 12 terabytes of data from 11 different sources to support investigative analytics for law enforcement agencies. Mattox highlights the importance of proper data management and infrastructure to ensure accurate analysis and insights. He also emphasizes the need for training and expertise when working with big data technologies like DataStax. Deloitte is currently working on a new umbrella project that aims to build large-scale AI environments, focusing on scalability, model tracking, and library building.

DataStax Astra provides Spring Boot users with a fluent REST API for consuming Cassandra data. The latest Example of the Week demonstrates how to use Astra's database REST API with Spring Boot's RestTemplate. Upcoming examples will feature GraphQL and schemaless, document-style JSON APIs. Getting started is simple as Astra accounts are free up to 5GB and do not require a credit card. For those who prefer using Spring Data, there is a workshop on building a simple Todo application with Spring Boot and Spring Data Cassandra. Additionally, the updated Spring skills page offers hands-on learning scenarios in Katacoda.

DataStax Astra provides Spring Boot users with a fluent REST API for consuming Cassandra data. The latest Example of the Week demonstrates how to use an Astra database's REST API with Spring Boot's RestTemplate. Upcoming examples will feature GraphQL and schemaless, document-style JSON APIs. Getting started is simple as Astra accounts are free up to 5GB and require no credit card. Additionally, a workshop on building a simple Todo application using Spring Boot and Spring Data Cassandra is available for those interested in using the Repository API. The updated Spring skills page offers click-to-bootstrap hands-on learning scenarios in Katacoda.

The latest version of DataStax Enterprise (DSE) introduces an enhancement to its Unified Authentication connectivity suite, allowing users to manage roles through LDAP and DSE's internal role management simultaneously. This feature increases application flexibility and improves the DSE architecture by eliminating a single point of failure when using external systems like LDAP for authentication. The DSE Authorizer can now leverage multiple role managers, enabling more robust authorization paradigms and granular configurations for both internal and external users. This enhancement is optional and has been backported to previous versions of DSE.

DataStax has released DSE 6.8.9 with the future of backup and restore functionality through the DSE Backup and Restore Service feature. This service allows operators and administrators to perform backups and restores using CQL API, making it easier for users without impacting performance. The new feature includes a built-in role (dse_backup_operator) with required permissions, support for different types of storage for backup files, and the ability to configure backup stores, schedules, and locations. Manual backup operations can be executed using CQL statements, and data recovery is also simplified through this service.

The latest version of DataStax Enterprise (DSE) introduces an enhancement to its Unified Authentication connectivity suite, allowing the DSE Authorizer to leverage multiple role managers. This feature increases application flexibility and brings a design improvement in the DSE architecture. Before this enhancement, the LDAP system would become a single point of failure if DSE was configured to use it as the role provider. With the latest enhancement, the DSE Authorizer can be configured to utilize multiple role managers that are designated to the corresponding authentication mechanisms. This avoids a SPOF because the external group is the only group reliant on LDAP’s availability, which is more desirable. The enhancement is optional and has also been backported to DSE 5.1.21, 6.0.15, and 6.7.13.

DataStax has released DSE 6.8.9 with the future of backup and restore functionality through the DSE Backup and Restore Service feature. This service allows operators and administrators to perform backups and restores using the CQL API, making it easier and more efficient. The new feature includes a built-in role for backup operations, support for different storage types, and configuration options for adding stores and authentication. With this release, DataStax aims to simplify and improve the process of backing up and restoring data in distributed cloud-native databases like DataStax Enterprise.

In this webinar, the speakers discuss Apache Cassandra 4.0 and its new features such as lightweight transactions (LWTs), materialized views, and more. They also talk about the upgrade process from previous versions of Cassandra to 4.0, performance optimizations, security enhancements, and other improvements. Additionally, they answer several questions related to these topics.

In this webinar, the speakers discuss the upcoming release of Apache Cassandra 4.0 and its new features. They talk about improvements in performance, storage engine optimizations, and changes to the client back-off mechanism. The speakers also address concerns around upgrading from previous versions of Cassandra and encourage users to get involved with testing the beta version of 4.0. Additionally, they discuss the benefits of using Kubernetes for managing Cassandra clusters and promote Datastax's Astra service as an alternative to running Cassandra on-premise.